Thailand, "The Land of Smiles"

To sum up our time in Thailand, north, central, and west: we shopped. When we finally crossed the Mekong into Thailand 2 weeks ago among the first things we saw were a 7-11 and an ATM. It was then that our trip ceased to be a backpacking-across-Asia-adventure and became basically a two week Visa-fueled shopping bender. I'm not exaggerating either. We justify doubling, tripling, or quadrupling our 50$ a day budget by saying things like "Well, I need it anyway and it would cost 'x' times as much at home".

Our first stop was Chiang Mai, the second largest city in Thailand. Among other things, we met up with one of Tara's high school friends for a couple of days, took in a dinner show, 'learned' to cook Thai food, and shopped. Our shopping consisted of: one MAJOR department store, one weekend market, and two trips to the night market. We had to 'save' some more money by getting our teeth cleaned in Thailand (15$! cheap!) to make up for what we spent.

One of the coolest things we did there was went to the Chiang Mai Night Safari. It is basically a massive zoo with three parts: a walking trail around a beautiful lake, a Savannah safari, and a predator safari. It is probably the closest thing I have seen to a humane zoo (especially compared to anything in Asia!... except maybe the panda place). The first part, walking around the lake, was amazing. Just enclosure after enclosure of exotic animals, from chimpanzees to hippos. The best part was there were no other tourists so all the animals were out of hiding and near the walkway. For the safaris we got on a tram car and drove past countless larger animals.

We stayed in Chiang Mai for about a week before heading to Bangkok. We spent another week in Bangkok, half of it wandering the city from guest house to guest house, and the other half in one place to rest up. Our last resting day consisted of: 20 minute walk to the canal to catch a boat/10 minute boat ride/sky-train to the weekend market/wandering the weekend market for a few hours/sky-train to another shopping district/lots of shopping/running down Silom Road in the pouring rain to catch.../one last 20 minutes boat ride to get us back to our guest house.

Here is a quick list of 'sites' we saw in Bangkok:
1. An old Thai house
2. The Grand Palace
3. And that is about it.

Here is a list of the malls/markets we have been to:
1. MBK: 7 stories of shopping stalls plus a department store
2. Paragon: 5 stories of high-priced stuff
3. Chidlom Center: See #2
4. Center Mall: See #2
5. Siam Discovery: See #2
6. Chatuchak Weekend Market: Largest flea market in the world, connected to a great (cheap) mall.
7. Khao San Road: Largest backpacker ghetto in the world... lots of shopping.
8. China Town: Nice and cheap... found two cheap department stores here.
9. Silom Road: A road chock full of gem shops, and high priced clothing stores.
10. Night Bazaar: Another HUGE market, with tons of shops selling to tourists.
11. I could go on.

The way I see it, all of these nice places will be there when we head back to Thailand in 10 or 20 years. The shopping will never again be this good. And after being exposed to Asian prices we definitely won't want to buy anything once we get back to Canada.

Bangkok has definitely been expensive. We got out yesterday (thought we'd save some money), to spend two days in Kanchanaburi, the site of the famous Bridge on the River Kwai. It is really nice here. Yesterday we arrived to little huts connected by a wooden walkway, 6$ Thai massages, and even cheaper shopping. Today we managed to blow our budget again... although I definitely won't need any more khakis for a long time.

It seems we can't really go anywhere without buying stuff, so to finish our trip up we are heading to Borneo. Our itinerary there: hack our way through the jungle for a week, scuba dive for a week, then climb the tallest mountain in S.E. Asia. Hopefully that will help escape the shopping. We'll head back to Bangkok tomorrow for one more day, then fly to Kota Kinabalu. Three weeks in Borneo, then heading to Korea for 5-6 days then home.

Anyway, we should be home in about a month. We're going to be flat broke so bring us some fruits and vegetables (don't even want to think about how much they cost in Canada) and we'll trade you for Asian souvenirs. But you'll have to look at a lot of pictures as well.

Oh, and to explain the title: we have definitely been putting smiles on the faces of a lot of shop keepers.

Hope all is well!
-Andrew and Tara